Shadows on the Track
Shadows on the Track

Author: Jan McLeod

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2019-01-05

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1925675912

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At Templeton’s Crossing in October 1942, Private Nick Kennedy paused to write in his diary: ‘One wonders why all this strife should be … these men in the prime of their life cut down like flowers’. As a young nursing orderly serving with the 2/4th Australian Field Ambulance, Kennedy was unenviably well-placed to reflect on the futility of war. The Australian Army was woefully unprepared to fight a medical war in Papua and the soldiers paid the price. Almost 30,000 soldiers suffered from illness and tropical diseases, and an estimated 6000 were killed or wounded during the six-month campaign. These statistics have traditionally been represented as unavoidable consequences of fighting a war in a place such as Papua. This book disputes that narrative. Death and disease were inevitable outcomes, but the scale of the suffering was not. The medical challenges presented in Papua were extreme – they were not insurmountable. Shadows on the Track considers a wide range of issues that impacted on the health of the Australian soldiers before, during and after the Papuan campaign was fought and won. The strengths, successes, shortcomings and failures of the medical campaign are identified, analysed and evaluated. The focus on the front-line medical personnel – the men of the field ambulance units – brings a new perspective to the battles of the Kokoda Track, Milne Bay and the Beachheads. Shining a light on these Australians who tended the sick, mended the wounded and buried the dead in Papua makes stepping out of the shadows a little easier.

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Author: Ian Howie-Willis

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-09-02

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 1922387266

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Sexually transmitted diseases, for centuries lumped together as ‘Venereal Disease’, or ‘VD’ for short, have always marched in lock-step with soldiers from all armies wherever they have served. During the twentieth century at least 125,000 Australian soldiers contracted VD while serving in overseas deployments — the equivalent of six World War I infantry divisions. Until the advent of penicillin in the mid-1940s, the two most common and most devastating sexually transmitted diseases were gonorrhoea and syphilis. During the overseas deployments of the Australian Army during the twentieth century, these two debilitating, disfiguring, embarrassing and potentially lethal diseases put tens of thousands of soldiers out of action for weeks at a time. Gonorrhoea and syphilis weakened the Australian Army, seriously reducing its operational capability. These two diseases also incurred huge financial costs for Australian citizens, whose taxes went into recruiting and training whole cohorts of new troops to replace those hospitalised by VD and effectively lost to the Army for months on end. In addition, sexually transmitted diseases imposed enormous strain on the Army’s usually over-stretched health services. Essentially preventable and self-inflicted, they diverted resources that could otherwise have been devoted to treating and rehabilitating soldiers wounded in action. There were social costs as well because the soldiers who contracted VD were the menfolk of Australian women. The soldiers were largely inexperienced young men who were far from home and faced an uncertain future. The women they left behind would have been appalled to know that the soldiers they had lovingly farewelled would spend months in hospital being treated for diseases that were so taboo they could not be discussed around the family dinner table. In this honest, courageous book, Ian Howie-Willis tells the perplexing story of how two microscopic sexually transmitted organisms, Neisseria gonorrhoeae and Treponema pallidum, the bacteria causing gonorrhoea and syphilis, wreaked enormous havoc among Australian troops in all their wars, from South Africa in 1898–1902 to Vietnam in 1962–1973 and beyond.

Unending War
Unending War

Author: Ian Howie-Willis

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-05-05

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 1925275736

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Malaria is not only the greatest killer of humankind, the disease has been the relentless scourge of armies throughout history. Malaria thwarted the efforts of Alexander the Great to conquer India in the fourth century BC. Malaria frustrated the ambitions of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan to rule all Europe in the fourth and thirteenth centuries AD; and malaria stymied Napoleon Bonaparte’s plan to conquer Syria at the end of the eighteenth century. Malaria has also been the Australian Army’s continuing implacable foe in almost all its overseas deployments formation of the Australian Army in 1901. On at least three occasions malaria has halted Australian Army operations, bringing it to a standstill and threatening its defeat. The first time was in Syria in 1918, when a malaria epidemic cut a swathe through the Australian-led Desert Mounted Corps. The second time was in Papua New Guinea in 1942–43, when the Army was fighting malaria as well as the Japanese. The third time was in Vietnam in 1968, when malaria caused more casualties than did enemy action. Indeed the Australian Army has been fighting ‘an unending war’ against malaria ever since the Boer War at the end of the nineteenth century. The struggle against the disease continues 115 years later because virtually all Army’s overseas deployments are to malarious regions. Fortunately for Australian troops serving in nations where malaria is endemic, the Australian Army Malaria Institute undertakes the scientific research necessary to protect our service personnel against the disease. Ian Howie-Willis, in this very readable book, tells the dramatic story of the Army’s long and continuing struggle against malaria. It breaks new ground by showing how just one disease, malaria, is as much the serving soldier’s foe as any enemy force.

Four Brothers in the Pacific War
Four Brothers in the Pacific War

Author: Chris Pratt

Publisher: Balboa Press

Published: 2022-02-21

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 1982293713

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Dave, Ray, Morris and Alex Rohrlach were Australian Lutherans of German descent who served in the Australian Army and Navy in the Pacific during World War Two. In a fascinating biography of the brothers, Chris Pratt chronicles the events of their lives before, during, and in the aftermath of war. Dave, a Lutheran missionary in New Guinea, captained his mission schooner to rescue defeated Australian soldiers from New Britain in the opening months of the war. Ray served in a motorised infantry unit before enduring a year in an isolated malarial outpost in Dutch New Guinea. Morris struggled through two amphibious landings in Japanese occupied Borneo. Alex survived kamikaze attacks and a battle with a Japanese fleet in the Philippines to witness from an Australian heavy cruiser the signing of the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. Included are historical maps and photographs provided by the family.

All the Broken Soldiers
All the Broken Soldiers

Author: Jan McLeod

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-11-03

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 1922765589

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This is the story of a soldier without a gun. It is personal, yet universal. It is the story of what is left behind when the battles have been fought and the war has moved on. To the Australian Army, Private Lawrence Nicholas Kennedy was NX21854, a soldier who served for 1907 days with the 2/4th Australian Army Field Ambulance in Australia, the Middle East, the Kokoda Track and New Guinea during World War II. With older brother, Bill by his side, the Kennedy boys experienced the adventure and the joy, the loss and the despair of war – like too many others before and since. To those who knew Nick Kennedy after the war, he was a dedicated and professional psychiatric nurse. To the author, he was her gentle Uncle Nick, remembered as a kind, funny and generous man who seemed older than his years. The small diary he kept during World War II helped her understand why that was so. Kennedy’s words and photographs tell the harrowing and compelling story of one young man who went to war – not to kill the enemy, but to save his fellow soldiers – only to return home forever changed by the challenges, hardships and tragedy he experienced. All the Broken Soldiers provides a rare insight into an aspect of war fought by soldiers equipped with little more than a basic medical kit and a Red Cross armband … those who cared for the broken soldiers that war leaves behind.

War Epidemics
War Epidemics

Author: Matthew Smallman-Raynor

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2004-06-17

Total Pages: 842

ISBN-13: 9780191513459

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Down the ages, war epidemics have decimated the fighting strength of armies, caused the suspension and cancellation of military operations, and have brought havoc to the civil populations of belligerent and non-belligerent states alike. This book examines the historical occurrence and geographical spread of infectious diseases in association with past wars. It addresses an intrinsically geographical question: how are the spatial dynamics of epidemics influenced by military operations and the directives of war? The term historical geography in the title indicates the authors' primary concern with qualitative analyses of archival source materials over a 150-year time period from 1850, and this is combined with quantitative analyses less frequently associated with historical studies. Written from the viewpoints of historical geography, epidemiology, and spatial analysis, this book examines in four parts the historical occurrence and geographical spread of infectious diseases in association with wars. Part I: War and Disease, surveys war-disease associations from early times to 1850. Part II: Temporal Trends studies time trends since 1850. Part III: A Regional Pattern of War Epidemics, examines grand themes in the war-disease complex. Part IV: Prospects, considers a series of war-related issues of epidemiological significance in the twenty-first century.

Sword and Baton Volume 1: 1900 to 1939
Sword and Baton Volume 1: 1900 to 1939

Author: Justin Chadwick

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-02-05

Total Pages: 623

ISBN-13: 1925520315

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Sword and Baton is a collection of 86 biographies representing every Australian Army officer to reach the rank of major general from Federation to the outbreak of World War II. This is the first of two volumes, and its scope is broad, including chaplains-general, surgeons-general and British Army officers who served with the AIF or the permanent forces. Author Justin Chadwick portrayal of these officers careers provides a lens through which he examines trends such as the development of military skills which ensured that, by the commencement of hostilities in 1914, Australia boasted a pool of well-trained, albeit inexperienced officers. The effects of command under pressure of war and the enormous physical impact of combat are likewise portrayed in these comprehensive biographies. By the end of hostilities Australian officers had garnered immense experience and were among the best in the Allied forces. Ironically, this hard-won skill base was to be all but lost in the interwar period. Sword and Baton offers its readers more than a series of biographies. Rather, it describes a crucial period in Australian military history through the lives of the extraordinary men at its head.

The Taste of War
The Taste of War

Author: Lizzie Collingham

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2011-12-21

Total Pages: 802

ISBN-13: 0718193776

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Food, and in particular the lack of it, was central to the experience of the Second World War. In this richly detailed and engaging history, Lizzie Collingham establishes how control of food and its production is crucial to total war. How were the imperial ambitions of Germany and Japan - ambitions which sowed the seeds of war - informed by a desire for self-sufficiency in food production? How was the outcome of the war affected by the decisions that the Allies and the Axis took over how to feed their troops? And how did the distinctive ideologies of the different combatant countries determine their attitudes towards those they had to feed? Tracing the interaction between food and strategy, on both the military and home fronts, this wide-ranging, gripping and dazzlingly original account demonstrates how the issue of access to food was a driving force within Nazi policy and contributed to the decision to murder hundreds of thousands of 'useless eaters' in Europe. Focusing on both the winners and losers in the battle for food, this book brings to light the striking fact that war-related hunger and famine was not only caused by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, but was also the result of Allied mismanagement and neglect, particularly in India, Africa and China. American dominance both during and after the war was not only a result of the United States' immense industrial production but also of its abundance of food. This book traces the establishment of a global pattern of food production and distribution and shows how the war subsequently promoted the pervasive influence of American food habits and tastes in the post-war world. A work of great scope, The Taste of War connects the broad sweep of history to its intimate impact upon the lives of individuals.

MacArthur's Victory
MacArthur's Victory

Author: Harry Gailey

Publisher: Presidio Press

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 0307415937

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A GREAT WARRIOR AT THE PEAK OF HIS POWERS In March 1942, General Douglas MacArthur faced an enemy who, in the space of a few months, captured Malaya, Burma, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, and, from their base at Raubaul in New Britain, threaten Australia. Upon his retreat to Australia, MacArthur hoped to find enough men and matériel for a quick offensive against the Japanese. Instead, he had available to him only a small and shattered air force, inadequate naval support, and an army made up almost entirely of untried reservists. Here is one of history’s most controversial commanders battling his own superiors for enough supplies, since President Roosevelt favored the European Theater; butting heads with the Navy, which opposed his initiatives; and on his way to making good his promise of liberating the Philippines. In the battles for Buna, Lae, and Port Moresby, the capture of Finschhafen, and other major actions, he would prove his critics wrong and burnish an image of greatness that would last through the Korean War. This was the “other” Pacific War: the one MacArthur fought in New Guinea and, against all odds and most predictions, decisively won.